Kelly Racing complete Winton aero test

The Kelly Racing team has completed a busy day of testing at Winton Raceway to evaluate the new aero package in place on the Nissan Altima for the remainder of the Supercars Championship season.

It was announced last week that changes would be made to the car ahead of the next round of the season at The Bend, with the team using the test day at Winton to evaluate modifications to all four cars.

More than 1,200km were completed in total, although the nature of the resurfaced Winton circuit means there are some questions still unanswered about the overall levels of front end grid and the levels of drag created by a new rear gurney flap.

The team ran through around 100 different setup changes and 1,200km evaluating the Altima’s new aero package

“Understanding the new aero package was the primary key of the day so we got through over 1,200km and over 100 different set-up changes,” general manager Scott Sinclair said. “So the real work starts now in the next week before we get to Tailem Bend to understand how we want to roll out for the next race weekend with a setup that’s as good as we can get it.”

“We got through everything we wanted to and the drivers are reasonably positive about the change but until we’re up against our competitors at Tailem Bend we really won’t know where we sit.”

“It certainly has done what we expected in moving the aero balance more rearwards and given the drivers a bit more comfort with the package but Winton typically has a lot of front grip so the front grip that we’ve lost as a result of moving the aero more rearwards we weren’t really able to quantify so until we get to a more typical track where it’s front grip limited we won’t know how much of an impact shifting the balance rearwards has had.”

Rick Kelly said he was pleased with the performance of the car out of the box, even with more still to come.

“All in all, the work that the guys have done will pay off in making the car a little bit more user-friendly from a setup and also a driving point of view,” he said. “The car that we’ve had this year up until now has been reasonably quick at times but from a driving point of view it’s been extremely difficult to extract that time out of it, with it being super sensitive to inputs and how it reacts.

“Last year’s car, and certainly the one we felt at this test day, seems to be slightly more forgiving and easier to put a closer to perfect lap together, and that’s what is important in this game is getting the most out of the car in qualifying and having a car that is reasonably easy to extract a decent lap from. It’s not doing anything nasty at the moment whereas the car we’ve had it tends to bight you pretty quickly.”